The Union for Eastern and Mediterranean Partnership: Conflicting Geopolitical Interests or Complementary Concepts, Fall 2010

The article aims to elaborate on the European Union’s policy towards the Mediterranean region by focusing specifically on the newly-designed concept of the Union for the Mediterranean, which is juxtaposed with Eastern Partnership, a fledgling project adopted by the EU in 2009. A comparative approach is adopted which evaluates the “political resources” being committed to the two dimensions of Europe’s neighborhood policy. In the wide array of EU’s foreign policy issues, the national interests of member states dominate. As long as the conflicting interests of the member states prevail in discussions on the neighborhood policy, it will not be possible to design neither a coherent and attractive offer for the EU’s neighbors nor an effective instrument by which the EU could have real impact on its neighborhood.